– Maybe I should put a quote from Cartier-Bresson, the great HCB?

– Sounds like a virus name!

– It was really a virus, the one that infected us with the passion for „street photography”…

The tentative and volatile „street photography” finds great resources in exploring Germany. The dynamics of reality reveal an open and sincere soul, completely devoid of aridity, let’s call it legendary, with which the popular myth accuses the Germanic behaviour. This album is made in 2012, in the south, in the Bavarian region.

The festive atmosphere is far from the rigors that came after 2020, imposed by the pressures of social isolation and the inherent sadness. This is how this great European people knew how to enjoy life, to keep anxiety at bay, to go through the security of a destiny without complexity and threat.

From moment to moment, the photographer can record the ephemeral and beautiful visual documents, the expressiveness and contingency of daily life that turns the catharsis into an extraordinary story.

The German diary is far from the sad revelation of a Robert Frank, which outlines the portraits of melancholy and alienated people, but the romantic simplicity untouched by that „declassified” from the aesthetics of postmodernism.

Henri Cartier-Bresson associated photography with hunting. He was constantly pounding the streets, ready to capture a moment when form and light came together in an image that could also contain a metaphor for the unexpected convergences of everyday life. This idea, generated in the early 1950s the legendary concept of the „decisive moment”, drove thousands of photographers on the streets of the city to take honest pictures.

In photography, the activity of „find and shoot” is what most people think of when they hear about the term „street photography” today. Jeff Wall explains: “In the ’50s and’ 60s, it was clear that if you wanted to get in touch with reporting, you had to go out into the field and act like a documentary photographer … In the ’80s, it came down to a maximum: – not to deny the validity of the documentary photograph, but to investigate the potentials that were blocked before it. And if „everyday life” is a common subject, then „the street” is continuously a common scene.

Leading the work of „street” photographer to metaphysical, Nobuyoshi Araki explained: „In the act of love, as in photography, there is a form of life and a kind of slow death.”

A photo album by Cornel Gingăraşu

Special thanks to Marlena and Octavian, who made this album possible

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